Major milestone!

This past Tuesday, December 4th, marked 5 years that we Houghs have been in our home. Whoa...
most days it still feels like we just got here, even though we've added 2 more children since we bought the house the end of 2007. Read about our first home buying experience here.

We've never lived in a dwelling more than 15 months, so this is truly monumental for us. We love our location, we love our now-functional backyard, we love our neighbors and subdivision, we love that we have access to a pool and rec center and little parks and a pathways throughout the neighborhood. We love that we're close to our ward chapel, only 2 miles from the urgent care that Jared sometimes moonlights at and only 5 miles from his office. We love that we're only about an hour from the Pacific coast and a couple hours from Mt. Hood and about 35 minutes from the Portland temple. While Jared would still like to live in the country some day, I think our first little home has many advantages and we feel SO blessed.

We've done a few improvements since moving in...mostly on the exterior. Here's a look back...

The yards...front, back and sides. This was a 4 year project and Jared has worked very tirelessly and often enlisted the boys and my dad for help. We've also paid many young men and a few professionals to assist in hauling, digging, and trimming back the jungle that was our back yard. The first picture below is AFTER Jared cut down the 50-ish arbor vitae bushes that were 30 feet high and flanked both sides of our house from the back fence boundary line to the street out front.

This was what our yard looked like last August before we had a sprinkler system and sod put in, as well as a retaining wall. Ewww. Nasty and not very usable, unless you wanted to increase your chances of breaking your ankle while walking across it. Not to mention the mud pit that was a given every fall and winter.

Finally! A back yard that's functional and aesthetically pleasing. We have since torn down the old dilapidated metal shed (not pictured) and replaced it with a "tuff shed" and added central air! I seriously love my A/C more than my furnace. And I should know. I've lived without both of them. Just a tip...don't have central air installed the week of Christmas. It gets really chilly, really fast!

We've also tried our hand at painting. Survey says: we don't like it so much. Which is why the bedroom walls remain "white".

We get lots of compliments about the red in our dining room. Wish we could take credit for it, but it was there when we bought the house. There was just white above the chair rail. We wanted something to help set the chair rail off so we added beige above it. We've been really happy with that decision.

Next came the family room. We toyed with the idea of having two separate colors for the kitchen and family room, but there is no real way to end one color at the edge of the kitchen before the family room starts. So, we opted for one color and I forget how we decided on it, but "denim blue" was what we went with. Anything but white!

This is a picture of Karcyn right after she turned 2, getting ready for Easter Sunday. I included it so you could see the old windows and white walls. (Isn't she a cutie patootie??)

Here's that same window (after it was replaced in June 2008) and the family room after painting it. I don't regret the blue at all. I love how it sets off the floor and fireplace. We get enough light (west facing windows and a big sliding door) that the blue doesn't make it cave-like.

 

 

The only disadvantage to the dark color is that it isn't very forgiving when it comes to painting...especially with novice painters like us. It was this room that did us in. Jared and I were totally through with painting. (Having a 2 year old and infant and only being able to paint once the kids were in bed late at night might have had something to do with it, too...) So we hired a young adult to finish painting the kitchen for us while we were on vacation. She also painted the living room for us, too. Once we put the beige in the dining room, the living room color clashed with it.

Apparently, we thought "split-pea soup" green would be better! At the time, we loved it. Anything but white! But it was about a year when I had had enough and another year before we were able to do something about it.

Again, we hired a young man to paint for us. (We're all about stimulating the economy and funding high adventures or future missions)! This brown is MUCH better.

 

And even more tolerable with new furniture that we were able to purchase just this spring after 15 years of marriage. We were so grateful for the hand-me-downs from Jared's parents that they purchased 23 years ago when he was a sophomore in high school! But after years with them and years with us, those pieces of furniture were shiny with dirt and grime. (Oh, JJ, why so sad??)

 

After Jared removed all the arbor vitae "shrubs" from the sides of our house, this was what was left on the driveway side. While I was out of town in 2009 helping my parents pack up their home in Anchorage, Jared hired some of his young men to help him put in a walkway to eliminate the mud mess.

 

 

 

And this is what they came up with. I was so touched and grateful because that's the only "doorway" to and from the backyard with the garbage cans and mower, etc. It looked SO much nicer too!

 

Unfortunately, the pea gravel never settled and the mower would sink in it, making it virtually impossible to push the mower or even pull it for that matter. So, the following spring, Jared helped a friend put in another walkway...this time made of concrete! It's been such a fantastic addition! I don't know how the owners before us did without it!

 

 

We knew we would need to replace the garage door relatively soon when we bought the house. We figured we'd just use it until it died. It was old, wooden, creaky and loud enough that it could be heard from the bedroom wing of the house. Whenever we went to open or close it, we always crossed our fingers that it would still work. We got almost 3 more years out of it!

 

At the end of 2010, we put in the new, white, metal garage door with a key pad entrance and double layer of insulation. So nice. So quiet. I love, love, love the key pad entrance. It's saved us from a few brain blips when we've locked ourselves or our kids out. Also handy for neighbors to help us in a pinch!

In this picture is our old, icky roof. Again, when we did the pre-purchase inspection on the home, this was another item on the short list (10 years or less) that we knew we would have to take care of. While it didn't leak, I hated the light color that clashed with the paint and the moss that appeared to be growing under every shingle. An opportunity to get a new roof presented itself 4 1/2 years later, so we took it. (The guy in the red shirt and hat giving a freaky sideways glance was one of the roofers and VERY nice :)

I don't know why I didn't get a full-on view once the new roof was installed. There could be a plethora of reasons why. But here's most of it done. Wooo doggie...it's a very LOUD process getting your roof replaced. Fortunately, all the wood underneath the old shingles was found to be good and solid. We also had a "pick-up-nails" party once the process was over. Even better...we didn't need to replace any tires on our vehicles!

I love the clean, new look of the new roof. And that it's moss resistant! And has a 50 year warranty! And that the warranty can transfer to the next buyer!

 

 

Add some new exterior paint one of these summers coming up and I think we can wrap up our exterior improvements. Minus gutters. If you can even call ours that. They're pretty bad and those are something that cannot be "bad" in the land of perpetual rain. But that's okay...we're just grateful we've been able to make these improvements over the past 5 years to our little investment in Aloha. We hope to be here for many more 5s :)